A Review of Neverware's Cloudready as a Possible Alternative to Chromebooks | Hacker News Reader

A Review of Neverware's Cloudready as a Possible Alternative to Chromebooks

cheapskatesguide.org

23 pointssT370ma211 comments

I put Cloudready on a Google Pixel laptop because the original Chromebook OS stopped getting updates. I like it a lot except there are issues related to the laptop when it attempts to upgrade.

Same rationale here, I have a Toshiba Chromebook 2 (swanky) that stopped getting updates last year, now on the dev channel of Cloudready and it's got working Linux containers even (but getting Android apps working via ARC is sort of a headache). I remember part of the install process is going into the ChromiumOS settings to enable media playback (and even Flash, I was amazed to see), I wonder if the author missed that step?

I didn't look at the list, but I ran Cloudready from USB on a Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 and a Toshiba laptop I have, without issues. Also installed on to a hard disk on the Toshiba and it ran well. I didn't try the offline use after getting apps, but boot up and shutdown worked fine.

I set up Cloudready on a Dell Optiplex 3020 for my parents. They like it and the maintenance I have to do is non existent.

Before that I had set up a ASUS CHROMEBOX-M004U. It had gotten too slow, especially with photo viewing and basic internet browsing - definitely unfortunate.

I used cloudready to get an old windows netbook (asus eeepc) up and running for my kids and it has been great.

"The main problem I have with Chromebooks is that they are not guaranteed to be supported by Google for more than 6.5 years. " I was seriously interested/engaged in this then stopped there. I thought to myself, if I am still using the same Chromebook in 6.5 years, either an apocalypse occurred or I am so poor that I will have other problems that are more pressing than worrying about Google support.

Why? Hardware holds up well, and web browsing isn't that resource intensive; why should a perfectly good machine just stop working?

I don't agree that something should stop working of course as that is just a straw man...rather from a pragmatic view of actual usage from my own perspective that seems to be fairly normal to use something else within 6 long years that renders the tech of the now obsolete in terms of attention over gathering dust so thus I stop caring whether it is supported or not.

It doesn’t stop working at all. It stops getting free OS updates, presumably because there are many dozens of hardware configuration to manage, and having fallen into that trap once with Android devices, they didn’t want to immediately jump into the same pit a second time.

> It doesn’t stop working at all. It stops getting free OS updates

No security updates on a browser (a program designed entirely for pulling and running/rendering arbitrary code and data from untrusted sources) is a death sentence.

> having fallen into that trap once with Android devices

Google doesn't maintain any Android devices except its own.

FWIW, a common thing to do with a chromebook that has gone out of update service is to install either a non-Google ChromeOS like Cloudready, or just install Linux directly. Both approaches are usually easy and effective.

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